


Same Mistakes

by loki_scribe



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loki_scribe/pseuds/loki_scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you -- do you think . . . if it ever happens again -- ?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Mordred meme on livejournal ages ago. Prompt was "reincarnation."

The light by the bedside is still lit, because neither quite wants to face up to the darkness. Or to speaking, really, although in Mordred's opinion the silence is at least as bad. But he can't think of anything to say that doesn't feel utterly empty, or that hasn't already been said.

She's the one who breaks it, finally. "Do you - do you think . . . if it ever happens again - "

"Mmm?" He turns towards her.

The brush snags in her hair. She mumbles an oath, and he lifts it from her hand. "Let me."

She glances back at him, and for a moment he thinks she's going to refuse, take the brush back, tell him to leave, that this will finally be the end of it. The silence is just long enough for him to drop his gaze to the brush rather than look at her.

"Thank you," she says, instead of a reprimand.

He nods and raises it to wear she left off. "If what ever happens again, milady?"

Again, the silence resumes, and Mordred bites his lip. Maybe he should have let it drop, focused on her hair or talked about nothing. It's gotten so hard to say something, since they both seemed to have been abandoned and forgotten in the march of history. He wonders if he ought to apologize.

But when he lifts the brush out of her hair, she glances back. "Any of it."

"Any of it?" There is so much _it_ that could cover. He shakes his head, pushes the hair that's been attended to over her shoulder, and raises the brush again. "I would think, if its matters of love you're speaking of, it would've been Iseult and Tristram, or you and Lancelot, to happen again. Not us. Not. . . ." He fades off, grimacing, and can't bring himself to say it.

Not two lonely people clinging to one another because their world left them behind, because they can't be certain if any of it is going to survive to come back and they're too frightened to face it alone.

Guinevere reaches back, finds his knee with her fingers. Her touch is light, but it's real and it remembers, and that's what they reach for in each other. "Do you think it would all end the same way? Here? Do you think we'd make the same mistakes?"

 _I would._ He has no doubts about that, since he can't even fathom where the sound judgments ended and the mistakes began. But that's not what she wants to hear. The mistakes have been made in this life, but perhaps, if there's another time. . . .

"I don't know, milday," he says finally, because it's the only answer that's honest and won't break her heart. "Perhaps you . . . or Arthur . . . or even Lancelot. . . . Perhaps you're wise enough."

"Mordred." Ignoring the brush in his hand, she turns back to face him, and raises her fingers from his knee to his jaw. "You're not bad."

He raises his chin away from her touch, trying to ignore the feel of it against the stubble. He's never been able to hate Guinevere. God knows he's tried, knowing she's part of what stands between him and legitimacy. This is why. "Thank you, milady." His voice is barely audible.

Her hand finds his knee again. Touch is important. "I mean it."

The brush slips unbidden through his hands, out of her hair, and clatters from the bed to the floor. Mordred ignores it, wrapping one arm around her waist - still slim, after all these years - and pulls her against his side. He doesn't quite recognize the scent of her hair, but he remembers the texture, half smooth and half frizzy.

She leans into him, and if she feels the tears, she doesn't say anything.

***

It is much later, and she's curled against his side, asleep, when he hears the buzz by the still-lit lamp. Careful not to jostle or wake her, he reaches out and gropes until his fingers lock around the phone.

It's a text, and he recognizes the number. They both would. Arthur's.

Still, he presses the button to turn the phone off, lays it aside, and nuzzles against the side of her neck once more. Whether it's a mistake or not, this time he can choose to weather one more night in the eye of the storm.


End file.
